The Hunt
by Tierfal
Summary: Discovering a new coven is never a good thing, but there's something strange about this one - and that's even worse. The vampires are closing in. The Hunt is on. Matt/Mello/Near, Light/L.
1. The House

_Author's Note: __This started out with me listening to __"All About Us" by t.A.T.u. and wondering what to write for a Halloween fic. Then, appropriately enough, it became a monster._

_The influences on it are numerous and probably evident—the pseudo-science is from my major "Doctor Who" hangover; a lot of the atmosphere seeped in from reading 1984 for class; and it obviously owes a great deal to "Van Helsing" both in content and in ambiance. :D As it went on, it borrowed feelings from other items, "The Matrix" in particular, and The Time Machine, and goodness knows what else._

_You don't have to know any of that to enjoy it, however, which I hope is what you will start doing now. :)_

_(Wretchedly, I haven't finished it yet—I have almost five chapters written, and I'm going to aim to update relatively consistently, but I can't make any promises at this point. School concerns are still eating me alive, not that that ever quite stops me from writing fic. XD)_

_Happy Halloween! :D And Happy Birthday, L!_

* * *

**THE HUNT**

CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE

Mello jerked his backup pistol out of the holster behind his right hip, pressed the barrel to the closest one's breastbone, and fired three bullets into the fucker's chest.

The body crumpled to the leaves, loosing a reproachful wail, and promptly started writhing, eyes rolled back, mouth foaming red.

Mello couldn't afford to stand around and wait for the rest—the bastard would be back up in half a minute, tops.

That was the problem with killing the undead.

"Matt!" he shouted over the fray. "Got a stake on you?"

"You know I don't," Matt called back.

"Son of a bitch," Mello said.

"Amen," Matt replied.

Speaking of 'amen,' Mello fumbled in his vest pocket for this good crucifix, keeping the barrel of the gun trained on the young-looking, brown-haired vampire, who was clearly the leader.

The vampire snarled, baring pointed fangs.

Mello whirled, checking his back, holding his gun arm steady, and lifted the ornate rosary.

"Talk to me, gentlemen," he yelled over one shoulder, cursing mentally as the brunet melted into the dark.

"I'm alive," Near announced.

"As am I," L contributed.

"Good show," Mello said, putting a few good slugs into the next available bloodsucker. "Linda?"

"Here."

Mello ducked a swipe, gritting his teeth. "Oh, who else—"

"I'm here," Odd volunteered, darting under Mello's line of fire and dodging a vicious slash.

"Right," Mello responded. "Sorry, I always forget you."

"It's cool," Odd told him. "Everybody does."

"My bad," Mello replied. He opened his mouth to elaborate.

The leader reappeared, hissing, and dove at him, clawed fingers splayed and twitching. Mello moved to sidestep the assault—an assault so supernaturally quick that the vampire blurred at the edges—but missed his footing on the damned mushy leaves and stumbled.

Accordingly, he received the whole weight of a vampire as this hundred-and-thirty-pound specimen slammed into his chest.

Ow.

They went down together on the wet leaves, Mello kicking and shoving as hard and as accurately as he could manage through the blinding panic, fighting to keep the bastard away from his neck. _Life or death; life or death; life or fuck, I hate my life_.

He swatted the claws away—they didn't spell F-U-C-K-E-D like the fangs, but any wounds they left would have nurtured infection in minutes flat—and planted one combat boot on the vampire's shoulder, pushing with all his might and straining to reach the fallen crucifix half-buried in the foliage—

A foreign boot came down two inches from his ear, and a silver gun barrel aligned itself with the cinnamon-brown-haired head with the vibrant red eyes. Mello squeezed his own eyes shut as it fired a single shot.

Black blood splattered on the leaves, and Mello pushed his attacker unceremoniously off, accepting Near's pale hand to help him scramble to his feet.

"You'd make a lousy vampire," Near informed him calmly.

"Fuck you," Mello said, clapping his shoulder and squeezing it gently. "Thanks."

He scooped up the rosary and settled back-to-back with his little albino savior.

"Everyone's accounted for," he reminded L and Matt not far from them. "What say you we get the fuck out of here?"

Without wasting breath on a rejoinder, L lit a flare and pitched it directly at the risen vampire leader's (admittedly exquisite) face.

White sparks exploded into the night, and the whole crew of leeches hissed and recoiled, giving the Hunters a perfect chance to run.

They took it.

—

Back at HQ—that was, the local church—things were, to use a technical term, in a bit of a tizzy.

Huddling in his leather jacket, Near climbed up onto a pedestal that lacked a statue, drew a knee up to his chest, and settled to watch the proceedings, such as they were.

Wammy was heading things, as always, a bandolier like a sash across his chest, his trademark light machine gun slung over his right shoulder. Roger stood beside him, delegating, small and unimposing in comparison, his plainclothes further highlighting Wammy's camouflage and bomber jacket.

Near rested his chin on his knee as they started sorting out the teams—how many bullets they'd spent, how many beasts they'd killed, how many men were dead or worse.

Well, men, women, and mostly children.

"Terra?" Wammy called.

The tall, lean, ponytail-sporting blonde's troupe had been on an expedition for the last two weeks, tracking a dwindling coven in the foothills, trying to wipe them out. Her team, sprawled around her on the stone floor and the nearest pews, looked battered and exhausted, dust caked on their faces, though Terra stood straight-backed at their head.

"Devon is dead," she told them clearly, voice ringing over the fevered movement of Roger's crew restocking, distributing food, and patching minor injuries. "Alais was Turned."

For a quavering quarter-second, everyone faltered as the cheerful girl's face came suddenly to mind.

Terra said "_was_," which meant they'd killed Alais as her body rested, comatose in the wake of the bite, struggling to reconcile the virus that was invading and repossessing her every cell.

It was a two-day process, which, if the vampires didn't steal away with their victim, was plenty of time for the survivors to put a bullet into their fallen comrade's heart while it was still human.

Heads bowed, but moments of silence weren't taken during the census. When everyone was accounted for, Alais would be properly mourned, but the living were the focus now.

Roger noted the casualties on his ledger, and Wammy turned to the next team's captain to report.

"L?" he prompted.

"We're all right," L answered gravely, "but we've found a new coven."

Silence fell faster than the dusk had done.

"Just north," L specified, voice low and numbing in the lull, soothing and smooth—L had always been this way. There was something a bit hypnotic about him, something trustworthy and engrossing. "We were well into the patrol route, two miles into the woods. I'll map the place for you, though I doubt it's too close to their home. From their formation, I would actually posit that they had the same goal we did—scouting at their boundaries."

Wammy strode across the chancel to the folding table at the side, unrolling the largest map.

"Pin it down for me now," he instructed.

Hunched and unhurried as ever, L mounted the steps to join him. Murmuring broke out, agitated and discontent.

Matt hopped up onto the pedestal, sitting next to Near.

"It's a circus, isn't it?" he asked, thumbing at the wheel of his lighter, not quite hard enough to draw a flame. Wammy had cuffed him upside the head for it too many times for Matt to try smoking inside tonight.

"I remember circuses being a bit less grim," Near replied.

Matt snorted. "The ones in the cities, sure. Everything's shiny-bright in the cities—because they send all the problems here. Fuck 'em. Ever seen a freak show? That's creepy shit."

So was each black night with vampires closing in from the wilderness, but disciples of the House tried not to think of that.

"Dee said she got a hold of some vodka," Matt reported idly, though his voice had markedly dropped in decibels. "Well, what she said was 'A lot of vodka,' but that's what she said about the strawberries, too, and we know how that went. Either way, Mello and I are gonna go. You should come."

"I'm fine," Near said.

"Yes," Matt responded, "you are. Damn fine. Which is why we're hoping to get you drunk and take advantage of you, you little rat. Do you practice being a spoilsport?"

"Only on weekends," Near replied.

—

The party was good.

The parties were always best after they'd lost a few—Matt figured maybe because they'd been reminded of just how crucial it was to appreciate life while they had it.

Carefully, with fingers deft from practice, Matt rolled a cigarette and resolved to stop waxing philosophical and start waxing wasted.

As if summoned by the thought, Mello clambered over the coffee table and flopped down beside him, the couch creaking loudly in protest. Mello proffered a slightly sticky glass half-filled with a promising clear liquid, the scent of which burned its way mischievously up to Matt's nose.

Mello clinked his own against it and made a face past Matt's shoulder at the sober boy curled up on the arm of the couch.

"I didn't get any for _you_," he declared unnecessarily—the blond had evidently gotten a head start on the alcohol poisoning.

"It is legitimately more entertaining to watch other people get drunk than to get drunk yourself," Near countered, unperturbed, one finger twirling in his hair. "You should try it once or twice in your lifetime."

Mello scoffed. "Smartass."

"Thank you," Near said.

Matt lit his cigarette and took a long drag. He was trying to conserve tobacco—it was easier to get than booze, but scarcer by far than bullets, and he liked to make it last as long as he could—but tonight's insanity more than merited the indulgence. If he'd been in the city, he would've gone through a pack and a half by now, on a day like this.

But he wasn't in the city, not anymore, and, cigarettes or no, he wouldn't trade it for the world.

For all its cigarettes and circuses, for all the speakeasies and proper tenements, for all the _objects_ rather than _objectives_, the cities were empty, at least to Matt. He'd grown up in a place more like this, but rural—on the farm, when the wolves came, you picked up a shovel or a rifle, and you beat them back. You were on your own, and your life was in your own two hands.

He'd tried city-slicking for a while, but there was something about the disconnect from every other of the thousand people around him that left him cold. Everybody had an agenda, and everybody put himself first—it was about money, about subsistence, about living hand to mouth at your boss's feet. You were nobody, because nobody knew who you were. No one stood up and said, "This is wrong"—no one said, "I'm me, I'm a human being; I need things, but I need people more."

And then there had been the House.

It was the fliers first—one flier, really. One flier in the bathroom at work, taped crookedly to the wall between the grime-streaked mirror and the paper towel dispenser that had long since stopped dispensing paper towels.

The flier had said, _We need you. Yes, you._

Before he'd known he was moving, Matt had pulled it off the wall.

They'd promised at the beginning of the meeting that there were no strings attached, but Matt would have worn manacles if they'd asked him to. He had felt it in the room and seen it hovering between the members of the House—they _cared_. They belonged.

Then he'd seen Mello and Near.

The House had sustained major losses in a battle with a big coven mere weeks before, and L's troupe had just lost a young man called Alpha. L had interviewed Matt, folded up with his arms around his knees behind a borrowed desk, and Matt had pretended not to notice the handgun strapped to the other man's thigh.

Matt had asked him who the blond and the white-haired kid were. L had smiled, knowingly but without arrogance, and asked in return if Matt knew what he was getting into. Matt had asked if there was training on how to stab with stakes for maximum efficiency, or if you were supposed to improvise.

L had told him he was hired.

"Hired" was a relative term, of course, given that they didn't get paid.

Except in bliss.

Speaking of bliss, Mello had laid his head on Matt's shoulder, and Near had slid down beside them to cling limpet-like to Matt's other elbow.

He looked put-out as Matt took another drag.

"Mello's going to taste like vodka," he muttered, "and you'll taste like smoke."

"And what," Mello mumbled back. "You taste like marshmallows and sugar cubes?"

"I could," Near maintained, "if L ever left any of them."

Matt knocked back his drink, set the glass down, and kissed the top of Mello's head.

"I think both you sleepy-heads should get to dreaming of sugarplums," he commented.

"I think you're going to get much less sex in the future if you baby-talk to me," Mello informed Matt's neck, breath warm and moist enough to make the threat very harrowing indeed.

"How about if I talk dirty?" Matt inquired.

Near reached across him, snatched Mello's glass, and downed its contents with a stunning professionalism.

He set the empty vessel on the table and settled with Matt's arm again.

"I'm now ready for whatever you lunatics have planned," he decided.

Mello smirked.

"We'll see," he said.

—

Quillish was baffled, as L had known he would be: the vampires they'd stumbled upon didn't make any sense. They were, first of all, not nearly far enough north. The vampires made their homes much further from established towns, and though their hunting parties tended to cover as much ground as the House's did, the group they'd encountered tonight had been too large for scouting. Further, they lacked the facial tattoos characteristic (if not guaranteed) of the far-northern clans, but their clothing had been mismatched and slightly ragged, an unacceptable condition to the more militaristic covens encroaching from the south. They'd looked almost downtrodden, on the whole, and although the ambush had been brilliantly strategized, there had been a taint of desperation to the whole process.

As the House knew—as Terra's troupe knew all too well—a cornered animal was the most dangerous. They had the most to fear from the enemy with the least to lose.

L ghosted through the old hotel they'd sanctioned as a barracks for their ranks, abandoning his boots in the small but quiet room he'd claimed when they'd first set up here—a room, notably, that was close to the kitchen.

Tonight, L's newly-bare feet took him in the opposite direction, however, carrying him up the stairs, cold cement and grit beneath his toes. He paused on the fourth floor, where the door to Matt's, Mello's, and Near's room stood ajar. The lightest touch pushed it open another two inches—more than space enough to see all three boys tangled, dreaming, on the queen-sized bed, a mess of bare limbs and blankets and disheveled hair. L smiled to himself, rolling his eyes, and pulled the door properly shut as he departed.

The roof of the building had always been a favorite among his haunts. There was a grandeur to its crenelated walls and a welcome in its silence, and if he gazed at the clouds long enough, they always seemed to rain.

As if to reward him for surviving the evening, they greeted him with a cool mist as he stepped out of the stairwell, tiny droplets dappling at his face. He moved to the wall at the edge, hands skating over the old stone where it rose just past his waist, and looked out over the night. Two ancient streetlamps battled with the blackness that seethed at the edges of their yellow light, two lamps against a world of ill things growing, gaining, gathering the strength to overwhelm the last reserves of safety they could find.

L sighed. The one downside of roof-bound solitude was the way it encouraged vehemently angsty inner monologues.

He itched at his left ankle with his right toes and fingered the gun at his hip. Yes, he'd show them the _safety_.

It was just a pity, L thought, peering through the little round raindrops that perched in his hair and flirted with his eyelashes; it was just another pity among thousands that only oak stakes could deal a vampire permanent damage. It was just another sour note in a discordant symphony that civilization burned so much oak for industry. It was just another omen for an unlucky venture that they didn't have the money to pay for what was out there.

L drummed his fingers on the wall. One of these days, they'd start tearing down houses for the timber, and then, perhaps, the government would realize that its blind eye would be gouged out if it waited any longer to act.

Softly, someone laughed.

L whirled, gun up and aimed in the time it had taken him to blink, ears perked, eyes wide. His knuckle brushed the familiar steel of the trigger guard as he struggled to pinpoint the sound.

"So scared," a voice whispered from the shadows. "So scared, and so alone."

Before him, red eyes gleamed in the dark.


	2. The Hybrid

_Author's Note: Hello, friends! First of all, I'd like to apologize for a few things: (a) the update speed of this fic is slow; (b) the update speed of this fic is going to continue to be slow; (c) this chapter is almost entirely exposition, though I promise more vampire-slayage will come later._

_For those of you unfamiliar with my style (such as it is…), I don't give up on fics, so there's no need to worry about that! Presuming that I survive the next month, which is about fifty-fifty right now, I'm going to try to continue to update every two weeks, unless disasters occur. XD_

_Other than that… enjoy! :)_

* * *

CHAPTER II. THE HYBRID

L's heart pounded so hard his head spun, but his hands were steady—the gun was trained on the space between those crimson eyes, and he wouldn't miss.

"Oh, come on," the voice urged. "Aren't you curious?"

"Not in the least," L gritted out, trying to force his finger to curl despite the lie—he needed to blow a hole straight through the skull; it would give him a full minute to race for the stairwell, bar the door from the inside, and sound the alarm; they could evacuate to the church in two minutes flat, and someone would run to the storeroom for a stake—

"I'm not one of them," the figure said, rising from the thickest darkness, coalescing into a shape that was distinctly humanoid, not that that was enough to substantiate the claim. L kept his finger on the trigger and his eyes on the target.

One step brought the newcomer into the faint yellow light, which betrayed dark hair, pale skin, disheveled clothes, and those ruby vampire's eyes.

L tightened his grip. "Then what are you?"

"Look," the young man told him. "I bleed like you."

Before L could bark at him to keep his white hands in plain sight, the stranger delved into a pocket and retrieved a knife, flicking out the blade. He pricked the pad of his thumb with the tip and took another step forward—L retreated an identical pace, but not before he'd seen a fat drop of blood ooze out and start to dribble down the visitor's palm, red instead of black. The eyes deceived: this man was no vampire.

Or not quite. He didn't bleed black, but he healed like them—the self-inflicted injury was disappearing fast.

"I was bitten," the man explained, and L fought the instinct to flinch at the prospect that his mind was somehow on display. "As a child—I don't remember it at all. I should've been one of them or dead, but, as you can tell, neither's true. I'm immune. My blood absorbed the virus instead of giving over to it."

"That's impossible," L retorted flatly, centrifuges and tripedal microscopes whirling in the fluorescent back rooms of his mind. He hated the sound of the phrase—it was stupidity articulated in front of a proven impossibility, but it was the best he could do. He _knew_ what the virus did—knew that it simply consumed until the host began to do the same. But this—what if there was some threshold, some critical volume of blood a vampire could extract, too much to Turn, but not enough to drain the victim dry…?

The young man stepped closer, and L stepped back.

"How do you know?" the anomaly asked quietly. "How can we tell what's logical anymore? Have you heard a peep from the cities' scientists?" There was a curl of contempt to the words that L wished he didn't like. "They never went this far—they never even isolated the pathogen, not really. They never figured out how it works backward and rewrites genes, repairs cells—they never even tried to make a vaccine. You know it; you know this whole story, don't you? You know very well how pleased they were, how _excited_, when it still seemed like a game. What a clever trick evolution has played—what a charming ace Nature had up her sleeve. And when they saw that it cured nothing, saw no market, saw no money in the petri dishes where it devoured or converted every living cell—well. They stopped. The papers stopped reporting, and the cities forgot. How long do you think it will be before they have to recall?"

"Too long," L said, and it was the truth. His arms ached; he hadn't lowered the gun. He pushed the distraction aside, as he had always done.

The young man sighed, not without a slow and idle smile. "Then we're both freaks, aren't we?" he asked. "I am; I'm something homeless, in-between. And you believe in the boogeyman."

"It's easier to believe in it when you've watched it kill," L remarked.

The dryness earned him a high, merry laugh.

"Well?" the young man prompted, holding out his hands, wrists together, as if they waited for a pair of cuffs. "Take me to your leader."

L angled his movement, backing over to the stairwell door without letting the gun barrel waver more than an inch. He didn't know how a hybrid would respond to bullets, and he wasn't hungry to find out.

"What's your name?" he asked, turning the knob that pressed against his spine.

The young man smiled again, radiant and faintly mad.

"My name," he answered, "is Beyond."

—

Dawn woke Near, even though he'd only drifted off to sleep a few hours before. Nocturnal prey made for nocturnal predators, and one's circadian rhythms just had to cope.

Today, however, he was glad of his body's miscalculation—Rester and his team were leaving this morning, and Near had wanted a chance to bid them good luck and goodbye.

He didn't actually believe in luck, but the phrase was more traditional than "Well, I hope the steep odds fall in your favor, because I'd hate for you to die."

He did believe in parting on warm terms, which was infinitely better than having regrets at a funeral.

If there even was a funeral. If someone came back with something to bury at all.

Near slipped out from under Matt's arm and Mello's leg and stood, rubbing his eyes and trying to crush out the cynicism with the sleepiness. Fumbling his way back into last night's clothes—and borrowing Matt's goggles for the hell of it, because they were lying on his shirt—he reflected that he might as well allow himself to hope a little. Rester, Halle, and Gevanni were some of the best and most experienced Hunters they had, and if anyone was likely to return without so much as an infected scratch, it was them.

Trailing his hand along the railing, Near sidled down the stairs, seeking them out.

He found them at the long dining table in the kitchens, laughing quietly but genuinely over their breakfast.

Out here, in the wooded towns, oats were one of the few things they could always get enough of. Mello whined about it to the point of laryngitis, but Near was actually rather fond of oatmeal.

He ladled himself a bowl from the huge communal pot and sat down at the table, which was virtually empty at this hour—probably only the kitchen crew and Rester's team were even awake, let alone active.

Rester smiled to welcome him as he selected a place. Gevanni noticed the goggles perched in his hair and hid a knowing smile.

"How much distance are you covering today?" Near asked, more to make conversation than because he didn't remember from their last talk.

"We're headed to Danis," Rester replied. "We've heard rumors of an outbreak, and we need to know for sure. Best to be ready for the worst. We're catching the train in Vailiff, and we've got permission to sleep in a church in Acerton."

"That shouldn't be too bad, then," Near concluded, of the transportation at least. At this juncture, it was pointless to make predictions about the rest of the trip. He did glance down the table, though—John, another relative vet, was spooning at his food with a characteristic lack of enthusiasm. Near had asked Rester about John McEnroe once—he'd joined up after the vampires had come to his small town in the dead of winter, when the snow had muffled everything until it was too late. They'd shredded his livestock, and then they'd started into the house.

John's wife had been tending to their newborn, and he'd woken to the screams.

Rester's voice had lowered, unconsciously perhaps, and run with something like a somber admiration as he'd mentioned the result. John lived every day like a dead man walking, but they'd made him like them without ever getting to his blood—when night fell, he came alive, and when the fight began, he was a demon with a grudge. Nothing stood in the way of his vengeance for long.

Near thought it was somewhat fortunate that he himself had been too young to understand revenge. He didn't remember much about the attack that had erased his family—he remembered the anxiety before, remembered his mother starting at shadows and his father barring the doors after sunset, but the event itself was nothing but a blur.

The important thing was the fire—the vampires weren't beasts; they were sentient, if not always terribly smart, and they frequently burned what was left. It marked their territory and destroyed the would-be survivors, as it would have destroyed Near if he hadn't reached up from the wreckage to be gathered into Rester's arms.

They'd been vagrants for a few months after that—homeless, with nowhere to retreat. The cities would have tucked them into an alley and left them to die, and other towns were terrified of the contagion. The police had chased them from the slums of the capital when they wouldn't surrender their weaponry upon making it to "safety," and the vampires had hounded them when they'd ventured too close to the woods. They dodged from one boundary to the other for nine weeks, fighting nightly over where to run and whether Near would let the others give him their portions of the dwindling food. They slept during the days.

And then there had been the House.

It hadn't surprised Near, really, how quickly, if still in silence, Rester had regained his faith when he had organization and efficiency on his side against the cruelty of the dark.

Near could still see it in him now—progress was slow, if it was happening at all, but Rester believed. He'd been galvanized, and he still had the lightning in his veins. He had a home now, and a means, and a hope. He had something to fight for, and a unified front to pitch his battles on. He was a soldier, and he was strong.

As Near watched Anthony Rester stand from the table, tugging his cargo jacket into place, he was very, very glad that they had this man in their fight.

Rester smiled as the rest of his troupe took to their feet.

"We should be back next week," he noted. "Have any plans between now and then, or are you all running the patrols?"

Near drew himself up too for a proper farewell. "Patrols, mostly," he answered. "I'll see you next week, then."

There was some comfort to be had in assurances that might turn into lies.

There was more still in Rester's tight hug, in Halle's warm kiss on his cheek, in Gevanni's disheveling of his goggle-tangled hair, and in John's soft touch to his shoulder.

Seeing them off to the last tended to make Near depressed. Instead, he went to the church to watch the morning's light shift upward through the stained glass, pretending not to hear a jeep engine gunning, roaring, and settling to a rumbling growl that faded into nothing as its passengers rode away.

This morning, however, the church wasn't empty when he arrived.

The figure chained to the altar rail lounged extravagantly in a pool of light, eyes half-closed—but as Near stepped uncertainly closer, he saw that they were unmistakably red.

Near heard his heartbeat skitter in his ears.

The young man looked up at the soft patting of Near's footsteps on the floor, the sound echoing gently as if to apologize for giving him away. The creature at the altar gazed at him unperturbedly, red eyes set in a heart-shaped face on either side of a sharp, angular nose, their sightline partly obscured by the matted brown hair hanging over them like distended lace. The head tilted slowly, doll-like, to one side, and then the creature cracked a grin.

Near was startled to see straight, round-edged teeth—a human mouth.

He clenched his fists and took one step back. Whatever this thing was, whatever was going on, he wanted no part in it. Not with those eyes crawling on his skin.

"It's quite all right," the creature said. It was a smooth voice—calm, pleasant, and a little bit high. Its owner tipped his head towards the adjacent hall, a glance towards which made Near's knees go jellied with relief—L and Wammy stood just past the threshold, conversing quietly.

If it was safe—if it was under control—if there was no danger, none at all—maybe he did want to know.

Just a few questions. Then he'd go.

Near had always been addicted to knowing things.

He swallowed and moved closer—close enough to see the dust dried on the pale face; close enough to wonder what had made the rents in the shoulders of the rough, woolen shirt; close enough to marvel that the wounds had left only the thinnest of white scars.

"I'm one of you," the creature assured him, noting the trajectory of his stare. "Just… special. They tried to get me, but my body said 'No.'" He grinned again, broadly and heartily, and now Near saw the delicate points of his eyeteeth—long enough to look profoundly wrong, but far too short to pierce through skin and puncture veins.

"Why?" Near asked, pausing at the frontmost pew to curl his fingers carefully around the scarred wood of the back.

The young man shrugged, smiling still. "Stranger things have happened," he declared.

"Not many," Near replied, inching forward again.

The grin resurfaced, shining in the swelling light.

Near frowned, fingertips skating thoughtfully on the edge of the bench, and raised his other hand to twist it into his hair.

"How much are you of each?" he asked.

Another smile and a languid wink were his reward.

"It's hard to give percentages," the creature answered, sounding far from discontented about the fact. "But I have a lot of their talents, and a lot of their faults. I'm faster than you, for instance, but as of now—" He inclined his head towards the crucifix that towered on the wall behind. "—the power of Jesus Christ compels me."

Near did not think this was very funny.

"Why?" he repeated. "Why do crosses even work?"

Again the bony shoulders lifted and dropped, and Near saw a sliver of the promised preternatural grace.

"I suppose it's the shape," the creature said. "Maybe a plain 'x' would do just as well. In any case, it _does_. It bothers me. It's like a nagging in my mind—like a grinding metal voice saying words that I can't understand, getting louder and louder until I want to claw it out of my head." He smiled lazily, eyes half-lidded and warmly gleaming. "For a vampire, I imagine that whisper would be a screaming. It's torture, purely mental, no evidence, no marks. Too long, and it would drive them insane."

Near's scalp tingled as he pulled harder on his hair.

"What about sunlight?" he asked.

The young man stretched both slender arms high over his head, still beaming, the chain swinging as he moved.

"It hurts like hell," he announced in the same lilting tone—which, to Near, discredited the revelation a bit. "It does," the creature assured him, as if Near's doubts had been written on his forehead in calligraphic ink. "I'll sunburn soon; I'll be peeling by the evening. Real vampires just _burn_. I imagine it's a side effect of the virus—extreme photophobia. Evolution isn't perfect." The corners of the red eyes crinkled as he smiled. "Not yet."

Near shifted. He was too close now—much too close. He could see the rust on the chain links and the grains of dust in the thick black eyelashes, dipping low over irises the color of…

"Why the blood?" he asked.

The creature laughed, a tinkling sound like bells and wind-chimes and breaking glass.

"I don't know," he said. "Sunlight hurts like hell, and blood tastes like heaven."

A shadow fell over them, and Near looked up to find that L, barefoot, had soundlessly approached.

"They need the organic materials," he murmured, his eyes flitting over the creature's form, "and they have to get them directly. Their metabolisms are so fast to support their speed and strength—and to allow them to regenerate cells and repair any wound but an oak stake through the center of their circulatory system—that their bodies simply don't have time to process more complex food."

He paused, itching at his ankle with the opposite foot.

"It's heliophobia," he added. "Photophobia is more general."

"Pardon me, Professor," the young man purred, only grinning wider as L fixed him with an incinerating glare.

"Is it true what you said?" L inquired, frostily at best. "Will you be in physical pain if we leave you here?"

"You don't trust me yet," the creature inferred, as always seeming deeply satisfied with the condition of things. "That's good. That's probably why you're still alive."

L angled his head—just a fraction, but in such a way that the message of disinterested dismissal was painstakingly clear.

"In the interests of my joining you in survival," the young man amended glibly, speaking hastily for the first time since Near had begun to listen, "yes. It hurts. It hurts a lot, and it's still early now. You can extrapolate the rest."

L considered, and then he turned to their commander.

"Quillish," he said, "do we have an umbrella for Beyond?"

The creature smirked. "Oh, yes," he murmured, white fingers curling and uncurling around the rail. "You're very good indeed."

"I'll take care of it," Wammy volunteered, joining them, as incongruously striking as ever—glasses clean, mustache straight, rifle straighter still. "L, when was the last time you slept?"

L touched a thumb to his lips, a gesture so familiar that a host of flutters and flickers in Near's chest immediately calmed.

"A while," was L's unenlightening response.

"We'll keep him in the church," Wammy promised, "but out of the sun. Get some rest; you're due back out tonight." He smiled, gently, at Near. "That means you, too."

Near would be lying awake for a long time after this conversation—rewinding it, replaying it, rediscovering every nuance he could coax free.

But it did sound nice to curl up in a hollow between Matt's and Mello's tangled bodies as he worked it out.

With one last look at the strange being chained to the rail, he scampered off.

In the instant of eye contact, Beyond winked.


	3. The Hollow

_Author's Note: Hey, guys! Had you forgotten that you were subscribed to this fic yet?_

_I have pages of boring excuses, but suffice to say everything in Real Life exploded at once, and I sincerely apologize for the massive delay. I've actually got this sucker percolating again, so hopefully it'll go back to regular updates._

_Now that all that lameness is out of the way, let's get to it!_

* * *

CHAPTER III. THE HOLLOW

L stared down the orange bottle on the nightstand.

The heavy velvet curtains, a whole world of allergens encapsulated in their musty folds, were drawn over the windowpane, a few thin lines of sunlight escaping them to cut across the room. L felt the light at his back, felt its fingers, felt the tickling, and in the creaking of the walls, he heard it snicker. His heart shoved at his ribcage, and his focus was drifting like a pale balloon, the ribbon slipping from his grasp.

It figured that his metaphors were disintegrating, too.

He picked at the pillowcase, drawing his knees a little closer to his chest, and memorized the jaundiced, peeling label clinging to orange plastic by a few last threads of glue. He breathed, once, twice, three times, four, and counted the pulse beating in his wrist, just detectable against the sheet. He reached out, picked up the bottle, and turned it one way, then the other, listening to the pills rattle back and forth. This bottle—this half-bottle—was the last of them, the last he had.

It seemed there was a shortage of everything these days. Soporifics had not been spared; therefore, neither had L.

He uncapped the bottle, shook a single sleeping pill into his palm, and popped it into his mouth. He swallowed; its bulk stuck in his throat but then slid down before he could panic or choke. He snapped the top back on and returned the bottle to its place on the table, settling his head on the pillow again.

He'd stopped taking the full dosage a long time ago, but his body hadn't properly adjusted to the chemical deprivation. He'd acclimated to the lower dose, and efficacy had come to require more. He was desensitized to the drug—as he was to everything.

"_L, you have to! You've got to; it's better for him! L, come on! L,_ please_!"_

He shut his eyes.

"I can't," he muttered to the phantoms, streaks of color beginning to merge on the black canvas of his eyelids.

Odd's eyes were wide, were pleading, were welling and wet.

"_You have to."_ The boy's voice cracked; a tear beaded, spilled, and raced down his cheek. _"You _have_ to."_

L rolled onto his back and pressed both hands over his ears, squeezing his eyes so tightly shut that stars blinked and wavered in the dark. _Leave me alone; leave me alone; give me two hours' peace—_

They'd been on an innocuous mission—nothing more or less than exploration; just a jaunt around the foothills, and they'd go home. It was a different set of scattered cities; a different woods—L scrabbled for the curtains, for the comforter, for the unused name on the bottle of pills, but all of them, all of it, fell away, and the past claimed him yet again.

They'd been north—far north. They'd been hemmed in on both sides by sheer mountain walls as they followed a narrow ravine, granite arms extending in supplication to the sky, rock and scraggy brush all around them. He'd been antsy; he'd been itching—some part of him had known. It was a whisper on the wind that tore across the peaks, hissed between the scrub plants' leaves, breathed through every layer of his clothes to kiss the hair at the back of his neck.

But they'd pushed on. Night was falling; it was just two miles to the village where they would take refuge, where they could hide until the morning, where they could curl up beneath the cross until they'd plotted out a new approach. They had that over the vampires—strategy. Intelligence. Vampires weren't stupid, but the virus didn't bolster their brainpower with their strength, and L could beat them that way every night.

But they were stronger. And red eyes saw so much further in the dark.

They'd tried. They'd hoped. They'd forged forward; they'd raced the sunset, but evening overtook them, and their flashlight beams were toothpick swords against the enemy.

Ten minutes after darkness fell, one mile from the town, the shadows took shape.

They snapped into formation—backs to the center, a defensive ring. Simple and effective. Blast through a portion of the vampires closing in on them and run. Easy.

Flashlight above his gun barrel, tongue between his teeth, L had put bullets in three snarling, tattooed faces before he heard the click, the curse, and the scream.

Alpha's gun had jammed.

He went down under a tall, vicious leech who seized the opportunity, and ivory fangs gleamed in the flashlights' glow.

L was on top of them in seconds, Mello so close on his right that they were in danger of clipping one another; he emptied the rest of the round into the vampire's back, ragged holes gouged among the ribs, before he dared to take a breath, noticing only vaguely that the other vampires broke ranks and ran.

Four seconds.

Too late.

Alpha was still sobbing when L hauled the body off of him, still gasping when Near drove the stake home, still whimpering when his attacker decomposed at a grotesquely accelerated rate. He was still conscious when Odyssey knelt beside him, gingerly cradling his head, careful fingers skirting the twin puncture wounds staining the collar of his coat.

Alpha had pale blue eyes and straight blond hair that was always a bit too long—it brushed at his eyebrows and lay awkwardly over the tops of his ears. His breath was hitching now, wetly, and a weak cough rocked his chest, bringing up a spatter of blood. His eyes were darting madly back and forth—as if he was watching something they couldn't see, as if the answer was right before him, and they just couldn't reach it. One tear gathered along his bottom eyelid, and the touch of his lashes set it rolling towards his ear.

"I'm scared," he fought out. "I'm so scared, I just—please—oh, God—"

His throat closed, and his eyes snapped shut against the light. The tremors began, jerking his body in earthquake waves, building to the convulsions they knew would come.

L couldn't move.

Odyssey set Alpha gently down and stood, clenching his fists.

"L," he said, "did he check the box?"

L wished desolately that he could say he didn't know.

He swallowed, and the empty words spilled from behind his lips. "Yes. He did."

There was a line at the bottom of the House contract—set apart. You didn't have to give your real name; you didn't have to reveal your age; but that section of the page demanded the truth.

It read: _If I'm Turned, my team leader is to kill me before I become one of Them._

Everyone checked the box.

Alpha's back arched off the gravel, and blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Mello and Near were clinging to each other, knuckles white, eyes immense.

Odyssey's eyes were like spotlights.

"L," he said, voice quaking, "you have to. You've got to. L, come on—_please_!"

Alpha liked collecting things. There was a shoebox of seashells in his bedroom, one of the few things he always took with them when they relocated, and he had coins from fifteen countries—trinkets he'd picked up everywhere. He'd shown them all to L once, explaining penny by penny where they'd started out and how he'd come to have them. He'd spoken softly, and he'd held up a shy little smile, as if he wasn't quite sure what he was so happy about.

Odyssey swiped a hand impatiently across his face, smearing dirt into the tear trails cutting down his cheeks.

"L," he repeated, on the verge of a quavering shout, "you _have_ to!"

_I can't; I can't; I can't—_

L couldn't feel his fingertips.

He put his hand into his pocket and selected a single bullet. He pushed it into the chamber, racked the barrel, and stepped up to the boy bleeding onto the rocky ground. He forced himself to breathe.

His hand was steady as he raised the gun, lined up his sights, and slid his finger up and down the trigger's gentle curve.

_I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I had to you know that I had to forgive me please—_

He fired one shot.

A lay still. Uncorrupted blood spread slowly across his chest.

L went to his pack, found a black sheet, and wrapped it around the limp, heavy form. He shouldered his pack again, lifted Alpha's corpse in both arms, and turned to the broken remnants of his team.

"It's another mile to the church," he said.

Odyssey heaved himself to his feet, scrubbing hopelessly at his eyes, flung his bag over one shoulder, and started down the path.

L could feel the weight in his arms even now—the weight of the dead boy faceless under the sheet; the weight of losing him. The weight of what was possible every minute of the night.

He buried his face in the pillow, focusing on the sound of his breath, trying to reclaim this moment from its billion predecessors, trying to own today.

The vampire—the brown-haired vampire, hours before. His eyes burned like a beacon on the backs of L's eyelids, such a vibrant, flaring red. They'd been so _brilliant_, those eyes—sharp, clever, keen. This one wasn't just a hungry thing; there was more. There had been a weariness there, L had seen it; a desperation and a… fear. Not fear of the light; not the animal fear of the sparking flare in L's right hand; a deeper feeling. A dread.

L pushed the thought away. He'd have to kill that creature tonight, or as soon as he could manage. He'd have to watch the red eyes glaze. That was what the House did. It was what they were.

The Hunt was on.

—

Matt's arm reached after him, fingers wriggling, as Mello slid out of the bed.

"I'm getting breakfast," Mello announced. "You can sleep until we're on-duty, for all I care."

"Will," Matt promised into the pillow.

"It's past noon," Near pointed out, nestling closer to Matt's chest. "It's more like lunch at this point."

Mello gave him the finger, and even though Near's eyes were closed, he grinned smugly.

Mello bit his lip so that he wouldn't mutter, put Matt's pants on, gathered some sort-of-clean clothes, and went to see if there was any hot water left in the clanking pipes.

As it turned out, there was just enough for him to lather up his hair before the shower stream went cold.

Typical.

Sourly, rubbing his thumb back and forth along the contours of his crucifix, he headed down the stairs. If there was nothing but watery leftover oatmeal for lunch, he was going to stake a ho.

"Good timing," Roger told him, smiling, as he burst into the old conference room they'd turned into a dining hall. "We just got that shipment of chocolate we ordered—two weeks late, but at least it's here."

Mello's chest seized up with joy—he almost couldn't breathe, and speaking was right out. Stakeable hos could rest easily for now.

Roger got up from the table—from a plate of _bread_ with _peanut butter_, with what looked like _turkey_ on the side; Mello was overwhelmed, and his mouth was watering fit to make him dehydrated—and led the way to the kitchen. Mello smelled the luscious luxury before he saw the box, and Roger barely had time to get out of the way before he was upon it, taking careful stock.

"Save a little for the girls," Roger said.

"They can split a bar," Mello replied.

"I'm sure the fifteen of them will let you get away with that," Roger noted drily as Mello sifted through the mismatched wrappers. "At least have a little real food first to make sure your stomach's settled; you can't afford to get sick before—"

The old-fashioned phone on the counter rang, a bell-like sound that hearkened to a fading world of things that had been _normal_. Daniel was busy with the turkey—_Jesus_, that looked good—and shot them a pleading look, so Mello picked up.

"Leech-Killers Incorporated; how may I direct your call?"

"Is Roger there?" It was Wammy, and his voice was tight. "We've got what looks like a pair of refugees, and one's in pretty bad shape."

Roger had heard, and by the time Mello lowered the receiver, the white-haired man was halfway out the door. Mello followed in case "pretty bad" meant they'd need more hands to stanch the blood. It wouldn't be the first time he'd done that.

They strode through the once-a-lobby, Gina nodding as they passed, and pushed through the fortified double doors to the rickety tunnel that led to the church. It wasn't long, and it wasn't much, but it was infinitely better than leaving their passage open to the night.

At present, of course, the sun peeked through the countless cracks and gaps between the boards, strips of yellow making tiger's stripes on the frayed fabric of Roger's sweater. Roger always had his emergency-oriented suitcase at hand, because, as a rule, he hoped for the best and expected the absolute worst.

An oak stake they never took for Hunting lay at the bottom of that case.

You never knew.

They reached the church just as Wammy and Odd were letting two people inside—both were dark-haired and pale-faced, and Mello could see immediately why Roger had been summoned to help. The woman looked all right—there was a nasty gash on her right arm, but it wasn't festering, and her eyes were sharp and clear—but the man whose weight Wammy was carefully taking from her was bleeding heavily from the deep wound in his side.

With Odd's help, they laid him down on one of the pews, wincing sympathetically as he cried out, curled up, and reached blindly for the woman's hand, which she immediately gave him, kneeling close by. Roger joined her, opening the case, and withdrew a series of half-filled jars and clean rags—medical sterility was hard to come by, and, as always, all they could manage was something close. The patient was too preoccupied to protest.

He was gasping, like a man underwater, like it was breath he'd lost instead of blood, and he clutched at the woman's hand. She gripped his, jaw set, eyes guarded, and looked up at Roger as if to promise that she could take whatever was coming next.

Roger didn't waste time with an answer, which basically served as one.

It was just water, first, to mop off the worst of the blood, and then there was the usual disinfectant—two parts alcohol, one part holy water.

The man writhed when the ethanol hit the open wound, and the motion summoned still more vibrant fluid from the too-red, too-raw flesh unveiled by the injury. Roger gritted his teeth and threaded a needle with delicate wire.

"Mello," he said, "are your hands clean?"

The only things he'd really touched since taking a shower were the chocolate bars, the telephone, and his crucifix. Having the residue of the latter might actually help.

"Clean enough," he decided.

"Good," Roger noted. He set a finger on either side of the oozing wound to demonstrate. "Hold here—tightly."

Mello obliged, struggling to disconnect his mind and leave it on a nearby pew—this was just a task, just a favor, just something Roger needed for a minute, not a matter of a man's life.

Denial was an extraordinarily ineffective strategy when it came to these things.

He pushed the wound shut as best he could, pressing the two ridges of skin together over the space, and tried to duck out of Roger's light. There was more alcohol, pungent and softly burning in Mello's nose, and an accompanying hiss from the man, then the needle swooped down once, dove through, swung, and glided through again.

One stitch.

The man gritted his teeth and wrung the woman's hand. Mello kind of wanted to apologize for the shortage of anesthetic—they saved it for major dental procedures and minor surgeries—but he thought mentioning the prospect might just emphasize the lack.

"Stay calm," Roger urged the man. "Try to breathe as slowly and as regularly as you can."

Apparently, that wasn't very slowly and regularly at all. There was blood smeared all over Mello's fingertips, and he kept slipping. Roger clenched his jaw and waited, refraining from reprimanding him, and Mello swallowed hard, wiped his hands on the nearest rag, and worked harder to keep the wound closed and steady. The needle rose and descended like a bird, like a sharp-nosed fish leaping, and little stitches slowly pulled the wide laceration shut.

"Thank you, Mello," Roger murmured when a single firm knot had tied off the wire, and a gleam of clippers had freed the excess. Mello scrambled out of the way, joining Odd at the periphery of the scene. Odd handed him a new rag to clean his hands as Roger bent to treat the smaller scrapes and scratches up and down the man's ribs, carefully cutting stiff, bloodstained fabric out of the way.

The woman kissed the back of the man's hand and cradled it in both of hers, clearing her throat.

"This is Raye," she announced. "I'm Naomi. We're from Driskin."

Everyone but Roger went very still.

Driskin was just three miles away, and they'd thought it was safe—their influence extended two miles beyond it, and patrols ranged past it all the time.

"What happened?" Wammy asked, eyes unfathomable, arms folded across his chest.

"They just—came," the woman answered, pushing her long hair back from her face. "In the middle of the night; no warning, no preparation, nothing. They didn't—they didn't hurt anybody who didn't resist, and they were… methodical. They were incredibly methodical; they were systematic. They were really _smart_. The leader especially—he had brown hair, and he was very tall. We fought back and refused to let them shepherd us out of our home, but—everybody else, they just searched their houses, rummaged through the basements, slaughtered a few livestock, and then they were gone. They were—" She swallowed, hesitating, and then she mustered her voice again. "They were looking for something."


	4. The Harm

_Author's Note: First off, thank you to Eltea for looking over this shit. I mean, this chapter. Yeah. Chapter is the word._

_Second, there seems to be a little bit of confusion, which isn't dreadfully important, but which I might as well clear up anyway—we actually saw Light in the first chapter! Really and truly! And yes, never fear, he will become more prominent soon._

_Maybe even in this shit. I mean, this chapter._

* * *

CHAPTER IV. THE HARM

When Odd had led Raye off in search of a clean bed, as Roger attended Naomi's much less serious wounds, Mello had the time to glance around and the luxury to observe the glaring problem in the familiar church.

"What the hell is _that_?" he demanded, pointing sharply to the dark-haired, red-eyed _thing_ lounging at the altar rail, shaded by a faded beach umbrella, each section of which was a different color of the rainbow.

"Poignant word choice," the _thing_ declared, pleasantly. "'Hell' is a good start, and I love the impersonality of the definite pronoun—distancing, no less."

"Don't argue with him," Wammy interjected as Mello opened his mouth. "He just gets worse."

"Or better," the thing offered cheerfully.

Pausing to look more closely, Mello saw the hint of strain in the round-toothed smile, the bent shoulders shying from the cross, and the chain wrapped three times around the rail. Whatever this thing was, it was trapped.

It was also grinning at him like a cat.

"Curious, aren't you?" it asked. "Dreadfully inquisitive. There's just so much we don't know, isn't there? And so much that's worth knowing."

"So enlighten me," Mello shot back, folding his arms, making sure to jar the crucifix that hung around his neck.

The uncanny red eyes danced. "I don't know much," the thing answered. "Aren't most freaks held in the dark about the very nature of their freakishness, just in case it could become a weapon?" White fingers like a skeleton's trilled playfully across the rail. "Ah, but who's doing the holding? Maybe that's what you should ask."

"Wammy," Mello asked the man sidelong, "why are we keeping a clown?"

"My riddles aren't very funny," came the murmur through the Cheshire smile.

"Meet Beyond Birthday," Wammy remarked. "He showed up just before dawn."

"Arrived," Beyond corrected idly. "Plagues show up. I _arrived_, voluntarily, with the best and noblest of intentions."

The silence was thick with _only to be locked up without so much as a by-your-leave_.

Yeah, his riddles were pretty damn lame.

Mello let the quiet start to fester as he looked this Beyond guy up and down. The thing gazed unblinkingly back.

"Ask L," Beyond suggested seconds before Mello meant to speak. "L knows more than he's told you or anyone."

"If you're 'in in the dark,'" Mello countered, "how do you know that?"

Beyond motioned to his eyes with two bound hands. "Given the circumstances," he said, "I see rather well."

Mello could see himself kicking this guy's ass.

"No one will be bothering L until tonight," Wammy cut in, moving to Roger's side to help an overwhelmed Naomi to her feet. "Tonight, we'll talk about Driskin as well."

"Just wake me up," Naomi told them. "And duck; I tend to throw things."

Wammy smiled and shot Mello an indulgent glance. "We have plenty of experience with that."

Wammy wasn't smiling anymore when they laid out the map that evening, setting weights on the corners so the edges wouldn't curl. L was up at last, looking pouch-eyed but resolute, and the assembled team spoke in low voices, hoping Beyond-thing wouldn't overhear.

Beyond-thing didn't seem to mind; he was humming Christmas carols.

"We can try that spot again," L mused, thumb to lips. "If they're as organized as they seem to be, it's likely that we'll encounter them again, and we can do our best to eliminate the lot."

_Exterminate,_ Mello thought. _Eradicate._

Like vermin.

L fiddled with a frayed corner of the map. "I cautiously doubt that there will be more of this type," he noted. "They acted… defensive, as if they couldn't afford to lose any among their number. Perhaps these are the only ones we have to track down."

There was a pause in which no one stated the obvious.

Or no one would have; Beyond-thing was happy to oblige.

"Don't count your chickens," he advised, "before they hatch into velociraptors."

L gave him a look, and Beyond returned a toothy grin.

"I was going to say," L muttered, "that we ought to prepare for the worst regardless."

"Fair enough," Wammy replied. "Let's see what the storeroom has to offer before you go."

They called it the storeroom, but it was really more of an armory/arsenal spread out in the catacombs beneath the church, an eerie home for cobwebbed sepulchers and gleaming guns.

Mello thought it was awesome.

—

Guns were important.

Near didn't _like_ them the way Matt did—he didn't admire them aesthetically; he didn't rank them according to their various statistics; he didn't coo over them and stroke their barrels like some strange ritual—but he appreciated them for their capacities and kept track of them to maximize their usefulness.

Different guns fired different bullets at different speeds: basic. More bullets, fired faster, kept a vampire down longer: logical. Bullets were expensive, and Near was too small to fight the vampires off manually: there was the rub.

He buckled a holster at his left hip and pulled it tight, settling a sleek semiautomatic pistol comfortably in its embrace. Six shots; reloading would take a minute, but he dropped another round of bullets into his pocket anyway. He'd have to save every one of those shots—choose six opportune moments.

He slung a rifle across his back and pushed his hair out of his eyes, stepping out of the narrow, firearm-lined aisle between old tombs to let Mello take his pick. When Matt had made his selections after, the three of them settled briefly on a low-set sarcophagus to wait for the others. Matt sat in the middle, Mello on his left, Near on his right, and kissed insistently at their ears and necks until each of them had cracked a grin.

"You're such a _puppy_," Mello muttered, struggling not to smile.

Matt stuck his tongue out and panted.

Mello laid a palm on the butt of his handgun. "Lick me and die."

"A good life philosophy," Wammy commented, moving over to them. "I think it's time to go, gentlemen."

Odd fidgeted, dwarfed by his assault rifle, grave but working up a smile. "Get your top hats," he added, "and your canes."

Canes actually sounded like a good idea—they could be used to beat the vampires back, push them away, keep them at cane's distance.

Near wondered if this was a sign that he was going insane.

He then wondered if anyone in a troupe of vampire-hunters would be able to tell the difference. The good news was that, given the current life expectancy in the region, he'd probably die well before he had a chance to lose his mind. Or was that the bad news?

Near thought he might stick with less thinking and more leech-slaying. This, too, was a reliable philosophy for life.

Linda joined them, and then L approached, a stark vision all in plain black gear, everything but his hair in perfect order and array. He carried a familiar and well-protected cherry-wood box.

In it lay three oak stakes.

"Last time," L announced, "there were six of them. There are currently six of us. Who do you think should hold these?"

"Near," Mello said immediately.

Near wasn't sure whether to be flattered at the trust or irked at his demotion to a walking gunsafe.

As it were.

"L should have one," Matt put in.

"And Odd should," Linda finished before anyone else could speak.

"Oh," Odd said, looking like he'd arrived at the same revelation as Near.

"Sounds good," was Wammy's verdict. He proffered three brown leather belts, each with a loop at the side. Near donned his, adjusting it around the gun already settled on his hip, accepted one of the stakes, and slotted it safely into the loop. They carved the stakes to facilitate this arrangement—the wood tapered towards the end, ideal for stabbing through virus-thickened flesh, and had a notch towards the top, delineating a handle and keeping them secure where they hung in the strap.

Near wasn't, on the whole, the best recipient of this kind of responsibility; his staking lacked power and finesse—sometimes, depending on his angle, to a hazardous extent. The way they'd plotted out tonight, of course, he'd probably be passing the object back and forth, more than anything else, acting as something of a guardian to keep watch over the precious real weapon, stepping in to employ it if someone got into trouble and couldn't fight out.

He was capable of that much—and a one-to-two ratio of stakes to Hunters was optimistic indeed.

That didn't mean his heart wasn't rattling the bars of his ribcage as he settled the heel of his hand on the base of the stake and followed Mello up the stairs and out into the evening.

Bad feelings were just the product of a strained imagination. They had far more firepower than was usually the case—including the means to put a few leeches down for good. What could go wrong?

Near winced, realizing that he'd started tempting fate since the moment he'd thought to ask.

Hopefully, fate would be above temptation tonight.

—

As he strode at the head of his troupe, navigating terrain only familiar in the dark, L was indexing all of his weapons, compulsively he knew.

They were well-equipped tonight, which he hoped meant the odds were on their side.

He smiled; the _Odd_ certainly was, but probability was a fickler friend.

_Pistol, rifle, Bowie knife, stake_. Standard, assertive, comfortable, safe. They knew this neck of the woods, and they knew how to kill the ones that made it bleed.

This was their arena. Let the games begin.

Apparently the vampires agreed.

There wasn't so much as a crackle of leaves as the monsters broke from the trees—shadows flickering and then gaining life, gaining form, gaining teeth. L snapped his flashlight on, the beam weak and thin in the darkness, and the shying away of the shadows was tantalizingly temporary.

The brown-haired leader stepped directly into the light, vast pupils dwindling, overtaken by the red. L swallowed hard, his fingers creeping towards his pistol, and struggled to block out the brightness of the mutated eyes—so clear, so lucid, and so afraid.

How was he supposed to put a bullet between those eyes?

Well, actually, that was easy enough.

In fact, he did it, swinging the Smith and Wesson up sideways like something out of a Western, arcing it towards the pale face centered in the light. Black blood dribbled from the hole, and the vampire dropped, elegant limbs askew.

No, the trouble was the stake. The trouble was ending a life—an afterlife—an un-life—destroying something twisted but beautiful, something with a dark sort of value all its own.

Before he could hesitate with an oak judgment raised, another vampire darted into his path, snarling, another once-man who had been youthful before he'd been bled dry and animated anew.

L put a single bullet in this one's heart and lunged forward. No space for compassion; no time to think twice. No time for anything but drawing the stake, lifting his arm—

But then there was another—wide-eyed and innocent-faced, with a widow's peak that jutted like a spike into his forehead. He looked incongruous as an antagonist—like he never should have been here, sharp-toothed, in a forest broken only by tiny flashlights. He looked like he should have been out on a cigarette break.

Wishful thinking was pointless. This was the world they had, and the only way to change it was one moment, one muscle, one movement at a time.

L's next movement was ducking a set of claws, feeling the breeze of the slash fluttering against his face, and the movement after that was leaping back from the next swipe. He fired the pistol twice, but the creature shifted just enough to take the bullets in the shoulder, not the heart, which barely even slowed it down.

L didn't like the look of this.

He also didn't like the feel of it, particularly when his attacker, claws flexing, bent low and barreled towards him, aiming to take him out at the knees.

Steeling himself, L let the mass of vampire hit him at full strength and speed, the impact sending an aching shudder through his bones, and held his left arm out to cushion the fall just slightly—pulling it away before their combined weight could snap his humerus. This way, slamming into the leaves left him dizzy but not winded, and he could force his eyes to focus on the barrel of his gun. He jerked it up to the vampire's broad forehead and fired once, incapacitating the thing for the next fifteen seconds—which he didn't plan to waste.

L shoved the vampire's jittering, healing body off of his, wet leaves crushed beneath it, and rolled hastily to his knees, lifting the stake he'd somehow held onto.

Miraculously, it wasn't broken.

He plunged the sharp end into the center of the vampire's chest, slotting it between two ribs, angling it just enough to bypass the sternum and delve into the bulk of the heart.

He skewered it like a pinboard butterfly.

The vampire hadn't quite recovered from the bullet, and his body finally relinquished him to a death long overdue.

L wrenched the stake free, climbing to his feet and staggering a step away—even now, watching the virus betray its host, seeing the flesh crumble and shred, blacken and collapse, bearing witness to the expedited decay, was nothing short of gruesome.

Reflection—and revulsion—were too slow to indulge in now. There wasn't space in this dance for any new choreography: their steps were unflinching and instinctual, and whoever made an error first lost the chance to make another. High-stakes, low-tolerance, and L desperately needed to win.

The leader was back. L had the pistol raised, had it trained, the stake loosely clenched in his left hand.

He wondered what color those eyes had been before the red had drowned it out.

"It's him," the vampire said, with a slow, triumphant grin.

L sensed the other Hunters pausing, turning, curious but wary, as he'd taught them a thousand times.

L didn't have time to be proud of them before the five remaining vampires descended on him like a flock of crows.

Foreheads, noses, eyes—he nailed the first to dive at him, not waiting for the spurt of blood like oil. The second, huge and broad-shouldered, came too close too fast, giving him a clear shot at the temple, and crumpled like a giant rag doll to the leaves. L whirled on the third—slender, young, with a discordant beaming smile—and raised the pistol, but wet blackness splattered in his face before he could pull the trigger. When the body tumbled, Mello stood behind it with the smoking gun in hand.

Near shouted, a hoarse, unfamiliar cry, tossing his stake; Mello snatched it from the air and half-turned to bury it in the latest victim, but another vampire tackled him to the ground, defending its brother.

The faintest crunch of damp leaves sent L spinning to face the latest enemy—the leader again.

He had lifted the gun and was gripping the trigger before he remembered.

"You're out of bullets," the vampire noted, smirking contentedly.

L pitched the empty pistol at his face.

The vampire stopped smiling.

A bruise blossomed in fast-motion, a flare of purple, muddling to brown, then yellow, and then fading to match the surrounding pallor again. The vampire hissed, poised to leap.

"Your mother is out of bullets," L said, unsheathing his knife.

The vampire stared incredulously for a second—long enough for L to surge forward and strike first.

Cut off the head, kill the snake.

He stabbed for the vampire's throat, rewarded for his aggression by the satisfying squelch of steel sinking into undead flesh. Black blood welled, but the vampire clasped two supernaturally strong hands around L's wrist before he could pull the knife out or shove it sideways for a partial decapitation.

Speaking of cutting off heads, though, vampires could take that, too—one of the others would retrieve the head and hold it in place as threads of neck and shoulders meshed and squirmed, sealing the gap and rewiring the nerves, in a process that was every bit as rapid as it was viscerally disturbing.

Usually, the entire troupe was moved to vomiting by the time the vampire was reassembled, which made it a rather ineffective attack strategy on the whole.

L felt sick enough now—hollow-sick, a riotous foreboding stirring in his stomach, darts of anxiety waging a campaign to overtake him. The vampire's grip on his wrist tightened until L's fingertips tingled, pins and needles seething up his arm, and he clenched his teeth and hefted the stake in his left hand. Their eyes were locked—blood-red and a shade of gray.

He wasn't supposed to be here.

They should have listened.

This shouldn't have been happening at all.

He brought the stake down in an almost-perfect weak-handed arc.

Before the stake's point landed, in the split-second of leeway, the vampire twisted L's wrist, yanked it and the knife from the wound, and hurled L sideways as if he weighed nothing at all.

He felt as though it was true. He felt completely insubstantial—time slowed; the world shifted, second by second, in stop-motion frames like a half-broken movie reel; faintly he heard Mello screaming over the rush of air.

Then he crashed into a tree trunk, and everything went precipitously black.

Well, shit.

—

Mello flung himself forward, howling like an animal, and only Matt's arms around his waist kept him from throwing himself unarmed at the five vampires gathering around an unconscious L.

Blurry in their haste, flashlight beams flicking at their backs, the vampires avoided the fallen stake and slung L over the big one's shoulder.

Odd fired three bullets into the leader's chest, eyes streaming, but the brown-haired bastard just sneered, unnaturally strengthened by success, and melted into the dark.

And then they were gone.

It was quiet—impossibly quiet; the silence thick and brimming. They were alone with the scrag-fingered trees and the damp leaves, the eyeless sky and the drifting mist curling its cold hands around them. A sickening, wizened corpse and a shard of oak lay listlessly in the crisscrossing tracks of displaced foliage. A cricket chirped.

Near's knees were shaking as he shuffled across the clearing and picked up the stake.

Matt let go of Mello's arm, and the other boy sank to the ground and sobbed.

No one spoke for a long time.

"Get up," Linda said.

Mello gave her a look that would have melted through glass.

"Get _up_," she repeated, louder. "We'll need a hell of a lot more Hunters if we're going to track them down."

Slowly, Mello pushed himself to his feet, straightened, and dragged one arm across his eyes.

"Give me that stake, Near," he ordered.

Wordlessly Near handed it over.

Mello admired the weak fragment of wood, still stained with brackish virus-blood.

"This is the one I'll kill him with," he announced. "You're hearing me make this as a promise. I'm going to kill the fucker with this stake, and I'm going to watch him die."

Matt saw the fierce, cold light in Mello's eyes and believed it.


	5. The Hope

_Author's Note: You're like, "Holy shit, that fic that never updates just updated!", and I'm like, "Hey, man, don't judge me; my life is a big, ugly mess that does not involve working on this fic." And you're like, "That's never stopped you before!", and I'm like, "STFU PLZ."_

_Yeah. Exactly like that._

_I'm going to stop making promises about updates, because they're obviously all lies, but I do fully intend to finish this thing, once I figure out where it's actually going. It's just going to take a while. Mea culpa. Mea kinda sucks lately._

* * *

CHAPTER V. THE HOPE

_No_.

Quillish thought the word in blunt, clear capitals—plain and militaristic, ordinary and uncompromising, like the red stamp at the bottom of a personal file. He thought of the jagged angles of the _N_ and of the inescapable circle of the _O_, and the word whirled in his head.

No hope. No way out. No ifs, ands, or buts.

No ors, either.

"We'll get a group together," Matt said. "We'll go find him."

"No," Quillish's voice replied.

Five tight, dark faces opened suddenly and palely with surprise.

"Why not?" Odd managed dazedly.

"We can't risk that many," Quillish answered, sounding flat and cold to his own ears. "Not for one man."

"He's not _one man_," Mello cut in, voice rising in pitch and volume, fingers curling into fists. "He's _L_. And we're going to find him."

For Mello, it was different—it was more. For Mello, it was returning a favor.

L had saved him once.

L had saved them all, in his way, in many ways.

Slowly and deliberately, Quillish lifted his hands from the desktop and adjusted the strap of his rifle.

"You categorically will not," he announced. "It's utterly illogical—half a dozen kids setting out after a veteran who might not even be alive now. That's insane."

"They moved north," Near put in calmly, curled up on the only available chair. "They must have a base of some kind, and they were too clean to be subterranean. If we start out this afternoon, we may come upon them before they've had a full night to do anything at all."

Quillish stood, palms smacking sharply on the old desk blotter, which chanced a meek crinkle in protest.

"You'll _die_," he insisted. "We have troupe leaders for a reason—they're the most experienced and usually the best shots. Any vampires who could capture L will be quite capable of picking you off, and they'll kill you."

No one flinched.

Quillish looked at his ink-stained cuticles, his cracked fingernails, the gunpowder ground into the lines in his hands.

"I take it nothing I can say will dissuade you?"

There were jerky nods.

Quillish smoothed the blotting paper carefully. "Further, am I correct to imagine that, should I make a specific interdiction, all of you will shamelessly defy it and set out regardless, armed with whatever weaponry you can steal from our stock?"

Jaws and fists clenched, and there were more unhesitating affirmations.

Quillish paused.

"Right, then," he said.

He lifted the strap of the rifle over his head, took the gun in both hands, and proffered it to Mello across the desk.

"Officially," he explained to the stunned expressions flickering on stony faces, "you had better be out of here by five tomorrow, when I'll update the census and condemn your irresponsible choice." He smiled, just a little, and not without difficulty. "Unofficially… good luck and godspeed."

Mello lifted the rifle from his hands and shouldered it, returning a thin, shaky smile of his own.

They trooped out, mismatched soldiers, avenging angels in outsized fatigues, overworked and inadequately armed, fortified by determination and a beautiful, irrational kind of hope.

_Find him_ were the words now, spinning wildly through Quillish's mind. _Find him, and bring him back._

_Please._

—

Matt needed a cigarette.

"We can mobilize by three," Odd noted, consulting the creeping dawn outside the windowpane. "Couple hours of sleep, reassemble at two, get the food, the gear, and the guns, then head north without anyone the wiser."

Mello was stroking the barrel of Wammy's rifle, presumably unconsciously.

"Why do they want him?" he asked. "What has he got that they need?"

"Who are they?" Near took up in a murmur. "They're different; why?"

"What's L's blood type?" Odd hazarded. "Is it something rare? Or—I don't know; is it especially thick?"

"They weren't killing him," Near mused. "They weren't attacking him, not actively; instead they picked him up and dragged him away."

"What else could they want from him?" Mello asked.

"Your bed smells like sex," Linda said.

Everyone stared at her. Near's cheeks went very faintly pink.

"So sit somewhere else," Mello snapped after a long, awkward moment had passed.

"It's okay," Linda said. "Just weird."

No one had any idea what to say to that. Mello shifted as if to speak, then changed his mind, getting a little cozier with the gun, as though it might protect him from awkwardness as well as it would from sudden death and varied foes.

Matt supposed one couldn't have everything.

Odd recommenced pacing and cleared his throat. "What route do you think we should take?" he managed to ask.

"Is that sector even mapped?" Near inquired. "Obviously, the topography is, so we'll need a map for that, but this is a new coven, so I don't know if the territorial schematics will do us any good."

"Probably not," Mello acceded, finding his voice. "Let's just run with it. We can map it out as we go. Maybe we'll learn something before we kill the fuckers."

Matt did not envy the fuckers in question.

"All right," Odd said. "Let's go for it. Let's do it. Let's go."

Matt took a deep breath. "Let's get some sleep first," he cut in. He gave Mello a long look. "And no, you can't keep the gun in bed."

Mello pouted, but he set it down.

Matt collapsed in the middle of the mattress, the only portion of it that was clear. He turned his head, which put his nose within two inches of Linda's hand where it was planted on the bedspread.

"You might want to leave now," he noted. "The cuddling's about to start."

"Goodnight," Odd replied immediately, gathering his things and heading for the door.

"Homophobe," Linda called after him.

Odd grinned over his shoulder. "Not at all," he responded. "Cuddlephobe."

They each managed a tight little laugh as he proceeded down the hall, and then the mood slid down the slope towards quiet melancholy again—towards a slow and absorptive fear.

"I'll get him one day," Linda pledged. "I'll cuddle him when he least expects it."

"That's the spirit," Mello replied. "Now get out."

Linda made a face at him, but she closed the door gently as she stalked out into the hall.

Mello flopped down at Matt's side the moment she had gone, nestling in a little closer, wrapping both arms tightly and a bit possessively around Matt's waist. Matt lifted a hand and gently disheveled the vibrant yellow hair. Near snuggled up on the other side, settling his head on Matt's chest, earning himself a hair-ruffle of his own.

"We'll be okay," Matt said into the silence. "If they wanted him dead, he'd be dead."

"But why do they want him?" Mello muttered back.

"Shut up," Matt told him. "I'm consoling you."

"You're doing a crappy job," Mello retorted.

"I'd be doing better if you'd let me get a word in," Matt countered, rolling his eyes.

"Will both of you please be quiet?" Near asked.

"No," they said in unison.

Near buried his face in Matt's chest and made a noise like "Nnnrgh."

Matt stroked the white curls, let his eyes slip shut, and mustered a little smile.

—

Near was tired.

He was also very scared.

Mello and Odd were in the lead, which somehow felt right—they balanced each other, flashlights, maps, and stubborn expressions out.

The flashlights weren't on yet. They still had time.

Matt must have seen it all bleeding through onto Near's face despite his best efforts to hide—the redhead caught his hand on the next stride's upswing and squeezed it gently, holding tight as they went on. Matt gave him a little smile, knit glove warm and soft against Near's palm, and Near understood, in that small, generous gesture, why they so badly needed Matt.

He was still gripping Matt's hand as evening fell.

Odd and Mello halted in a clearing that felt spine-cold familiar, in the way Near recognized as how night things looked when lit. There were deep furrows in the carpet of leaves, more than one tree had taken a stray bullet, and it looked like what it was—the wretched aftermath of a battlefield.

Mello's boots crunched on brittle leaves, and the only other sound was birdsong, tentative and intermittent, from their left. Mello stepped up to a particularly broad groove in the soil, which tapered towards the raw, scraped bark of the tree at which it stopped.

"Here," Mello said. He shifted sharply, angling his body, and pointed. "And they went that way next."

Odd cradled his good compass in both hands, tarnished silver faintly gleaming. "Just west of due north," he reported.

"Then that's the way we're headed," Mello announced. "Come on. It's almost sunset, and who knows how far we have to go?"

Near really didn't like the sound of that.

Matt tugged on his hand when he paused, and they followed Mello deeper into the woods.

Night fell, predictably enough. Clouds drifted lackadaisically, misting across the milky surface of the moon, doubling the shadows already cast by the lattice of leaves and branches spread out above them. They trekked onward and, as the terrain steepened, upward, flashlight beams sweeping bleakly across the trees.

They hadn't seen anything. There was literally no indication that anyone had passed this way, that any step had disturbed the forest floor, that any determined path had sliced through it towards some unfathomed destination. They were just moving north-northwest, in the precise direction that was the only clue they had. Near clutched Matt's hand and watched Mello—watched his back and shoulders tighten, watched his hair swing soundlessly as he searched the ground for any trace the universe might kindly yield.

The flashlights' white offerings swayed, and the night thickened, and a new sort of hopelessness curled and knotted in Near's chest. What if they never found anything at all? What if they walked and tracked and wandered for days and never found a scrap of evidence? What if they had no choice but to head back to the House with nothing to show for leaving, not even the worst kind of certainty?

What if they never even knew whether L was alive?

If things kept on like this—

"Wait," Mello said.

"Did you—" Odd was joining him; the white beams merged, pinpointing something on the ground not far from Mello's feet.

Near released Matt's hand in his haste as they and Linda raced to see, forming a lopsided ring around the three-inch crucifix half-buried in the leaves.

The cord was broken, beads scattered in the dirt, as if someone had jerked it free and dropped it; some clumsy, shaking hand.

It was a deep, lacquered black with worn gold ornaments, and it was unmistakably L's. He'd abandoned one of the small protections left to him—forsaken it on the gamble that they'd get this far.

If they hadn't, it might have served some hapless innocent well. L would have liked that.

Mello bent, curled his fingers tightly around the cross, and straightened, tucking it into his breast pocket.

"This way," he said, flicking the flashlight along their path, and Near turned instinctively to look.

The spot of brightness illuminated a tall, narrow-faced vampire in a charcoal-gray trenchcoat.

"On the Hunt, are you?" he inquired.

Linda nailed him in the shoulder instead of the heart with one stunned shot from her pistol, firing from the hip, and black blood splattered, indistinguishable in the dark.

The vampire gritted his teeth, massaging at the wound with his other hand, the affected arm dangling limp.

"Please don't do that," he said.

…this was extremely strange.

"Why not?" Odd asked slowly.

The vampire offered a careful, close-lipped smile. He had dark hair to his shoulders—matted, Near saw as the wavering flashlights pinned him like a moth—and his coat was ragged and frayed, riddled with older bullet holes. He was poised to run.

"Because," he answered, kneading the healing flesh, "I want to help you."

—

Mello didn't trust the leech any further than he could throw him.

He didn't trust him any further than _Near_ could throw him.

He was encouraged to notice, however, that every one of them had a gun drawn on their so-called ally, to the effect that if the vampire so much as flinched funny, they would reduce him to Swiss cheese.

Mello loved guns.

"How do you mean, 'help'?" he asked.

Sufficiently slowly to placate even Mello's itchy trigger finger—possibly slower than most tectonic plates—the vampire raised his hands, both palms out.

"I want to find the coven," he said. "The one that doesn't fit—aren't they the ones you're after? We have the same destination. You have the firepower, and I see better in the dark."

"The coven," Near interjected, cagily. "What do you want from them?"

The vampire hesitated—which was very interesting indeed.

"They're researching it," he said at last. "They're researching the virus. No one has done much since the first major wave was mostly relegated here, to the countryside, but they're actually doing something—or trying to." He flexed his hands, once again extremely slowly—the extension of his claws was pensive, not threatening. They were a visual aide. "I doubt they'll find a cure," their owner went on, softly, with a rueful smile. "But they might manage something—an antidote, a vaccine. They might do something that stops other people from ending up like me."

Mello's instinct was to say "Don't be so hard on yourself," but in this case, he had to concede the point.

They must all have looked mystified—justifiably, Mello thought—because the vampire decided to elaborate.

It was strange how earnestly he seemed to want their trust—it wasn't as though he couldn't protect himself.

"I was with a southern coven before," was the explanation, the red eyes wide. "I don't know how much gets out—again, the whole problem is that no one's indexed any of this—but the process was probably very much like what you've inferred from fighting the results. They try to turn you into a soldier, or at least to make you act like one. They talk a lot about evolution's course, about being _chosen_—" This with a disgusted expression that the fangs made frightening. "Absurdities. They forget—or they elect not to recall—that they were only '_chosen_' because some rabid, thirsty thing thought they looked iron-rich. They forget that they're _diseased_—that that's what this is; it's a sickness, and they're its victims." He managed an ironic smile. "Some army, wouldn't you say?"

"One mustn't underestimate the power of rhetoric," Near remarked with a fantastically pointed innocence.

To the leech's credit, he picked it up without missing a beat, returning a thin smile.

"I can hardly ask you to put your faith in me," he noted. "I'd actually count myself rather disappointed if you tried. All I'm proposing is a temporary truce. I can help you, you can help me, and our goal is the same."

Mello's arms had begun to ache; Wammy's rifle was on the heavy side.

"So what are we supposed to do?" he prompted. "Keep a gun on you all the time? Stop blinking? Why do you need us? You've got teeth. You're not as fast as a bullet, but you're faster than a stake, and that's what's important. Why do you want our help at all?"

The vampire shifted his weight—a sign either that he was lying or that he, too, was tired of keeping his arms in the air.

"I'm southern," he said again. "I was born in the southern provinces—just outside the city of Telial, if you've heard of it. That's where I was when I was bitten; I was recruited further south—I don't know this country in the slightest. It's a miracle I made it this far without getting caught and burned alive by villagers tired of my kind." He paused. "I don't know if you've tried cremation; I've heard it works." He cleared his throat. "I'll get killed out here. If I get outnumbered, it's over. Lights out."

Maybe the virus also did weird shit to your sense of humor.

"_We_ outnumber you," Linda commented.

Always the quiet ones.

The leech offered them another little smile, holding out his hands.

"These are the chances we have to take," he said.

Inclusive pronoun. Clever.

"Hey," Matt interjected, garnering everyone's attention at once. He held up a tiny cross on a silver chain, the metal glinting wildly in the unsteady light. "If you put this on," Matt said to the leech, "won't it kind of… subdue you?"

The leech blinked, red eyes hidden and revealed. That might have been the scariest thing—the fact that, eyes and mouth closed, the vampires were indistinguishable. It forced you to remember that they'd been human once.

"Yes," came the cautious reply. "I won't be able to think very clearly." He considered. "That size, I'll probably stay sane. I'm not sure for how long; like I said, no one's—"

"Done the research," Mello cut in, "right. That'll be our next project—wiring leeches up to MRIs and trying out different crucifixes until they lose their minds. For now, don't move a fucking muscle, or I'll blow your fingers off. Those take a while to get back, don't they?"

The vampire's hands, significantly lower than they'd been at the start of this standoff, twitched, as if yearning for the safety of their owner's pockets.

"Weeks," he answered delicately.

"Go ahead, Matt," Mello urged, keeping the rifle trained.

Matt stepped forward, paused, offered the vampire an apologetic smile, and slung the long, thin chain over their self-proclaimed ally's head. The gesture earned a wince as the cross swung and then settled on the creature's chest. Slowly he tucked his hair behind his ears, tugging it out from under the chain to let it settle in inky array over his shoulders again. He took a deep breath, seeming to be struggling not to glance at the rosary, as if it was a bright light hovering at the edge of his vision.

Mello was the last to lower his gun, arms burning with the effort of sustaining the position for so long.

"I guess you're with us, then," Odd said, quietly.

"Thank you," the vampire responded carefully. Maybe Mello imagined the faint tremor he thought he detected in the otherwise silky voice.

They all stood still for a lengthy moment.

"What's your name?" Near asked.

"Teru," the vampire said, softly, one hand jerking towards the crucifix, then dropping again to his side. "Teru Mikami."

There was another heavy pause.

"Nice to meet you," Matt volunteered.

"You as well," the vampire replied.

"I suppose we should go," Odd noted mildly. "I don't think any of us wants to be out here when the night ends."


End file.
